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Azara The Immortal
" It's funny what strife can drive a person to do. Why look at Azara The Immortal...a life filled with tragedy, and such a mark he's left on this world...."- The Story Teller Of Windshesiere The beginning From the moment of his birth his life was filled to the brim with tragedy. Brought into this world in a small village in the distant east, he was held in his parents embrace for only a few moments...before the distant horns of the Bandits could be heard in the woods. Before the child could be named, men were being slaughtered all across his village and women were being taken and forced upon. His mother quickly managed to hide her baby in a basket, as she engraved the name she wanted for him on a small wooden tablet... The name, Azara. Tossing the basket in the river, she looked over her shoulder to see her husband and the boy's father be horribly executed by fire. Having spotted the woman, she was soon seized and stripped...as they were taking the women with them and leaving them alive for....slavery, for needs of the bandits that should be all too apparent. The child floated down the river, barely missed by the Drowners and wildlife....for three days and three nights. A newborn should have been dead at this point for multiple reasons, but as fate and destiny had it...the child Azara, would survive. Found by a tribal princess with a bare womb but in need of an heir to present to the Tribal Leader, she faked a sudden birth and claimed she had no idea she was already with child...and stated that Azara, was hers. The name, is all Azara was able to keep. But from the moment Azara could walk, this Tribal Leader...was hard on him. Beating him, leaving him to starve, he felt something was off about this child. He thought it's complexion and features were too foreign for it to be his. And while he couldn't prove it, he mistreated his "heir" all the way up into his teenage years. Azara slept in his chambers one night, having suffered a horrible bruising from his adopted leader...when in the dark of night, he saw glowing. Orange glowing. Then...he felt hot, as smoke filled his chambers. In a startled manner, he emerged from his hut with fear in his heart to see his tribal village had been set ablaze! His adopted father...the tribal leader, burning at a cross in the center of town and the women...they were being taken and stripped. The bandits that so many years ago, over a decade so...had made their way to this tribe, and once again the atrocities were being committed. Twice over, to the same men had he lost everything...and while he didn't mourn his father, his rage boiled forth and burst when he beheld the sight of his adopted mother being forced upon. Azara, was impaled through the chest with a sword when he tried to save her. He had taken many beatings, bruisings, starvation and torture....but he had never fought back. He did not know what fighting was, or how to do it. And so he laid there, a hole in his chest as blood poured onto the tribal dirt. Presuming the boy was dead, the raiders went on with their pillaging and raping. It had been the next morning, when his eyes opened. He was supposed to die. Somehow, his body had refused to let go of it's cling to life. The hole in Azara's chest was still there, but he managed to crawl to the ashes of which the tribal medicine used to be...and wrapped a bandage around his wound. It wasn't as deep as the bandits had thought they had made it, it merely only caused Azara to bleed out from shock....yet again, it would seem destiny was on his side. Until the light of his eyes adjusted, and he saw the corpse of his village...all around him. Huts had been burned. Crosses with burned skeletons, the former men of the village...adorned the dirt. Nothing was left. The women had been taken, the men had been burned, everything was lost. Azara, a boy of barely the years of a teenager...was filled with loss and pain. And then rage. Into the forest he stumbled, nothing with him. He had no great plan. He was merely waiting to meet his end, be it at natural causes or at the hands of wildlife...or at the hands of something worse that roamed the wild lands. He wasn't sure how long had passed. Was it seconds? Perhaps...minutes? Hours? ...Would he go as far as to say it had been days? He didn't know. It was a blur, one stream of immeasurable time that weaved all around his soul. All he knew was that he was in bondage, robe adorned his hands...as two tall men, adorned in chainmail and with weapons...one a sword, and the other a mace....were dragging him along on the ground. He had been in such a lost daze, it would appear that two bandits had realized he'd be an easy catch...most likely to be used, or sold into the slavery of another. More time had passed...just how far had they traveled? Azara couldn't remember. Azara was lost in his mind, unsure of anything. He wasn't even entirely sure if any of this was real...he couldn't remember if they had touched him, or left him alone. If he had been fed, or left to starve. He was always at the mercy of others, and this was no different. The two bandits always talked, but Azara never understood their words, rather that be because of a language barrier or Azara being too lost...he was never sure. He didn't notice when it happened. He was laying there, free from his chains for a moment...he couldn't remember why they were missing, but he finally saw an image before him as his mind pieced itself together enough for him to perceive it. The two bandits were on the floor, surrounded by ravenous men with peeling flesh and rotting bodies....the undead that roamed the wild lands. It hit him then, the realization. Like a wave of knowledge and desperation, Azara snapped into reality! At some point, the undead had surrounded them and started to feast on his kidnappers! But Azara, had not been targeted...for reasons he was unsure of. Perhaps he was so alien with his lost thoughts of mind and so quiet, the undead had not even noticed him. But the sword. And the mace. The weapons, they were for the taking...and so Azara, feeling for the first time in his life a sense of purpose and will to live...took the sword and mace into each hand, and turned. Running! Running as fast as he could into the wild lands, following the setting sun! He was running back from where they had come. He was running west...and for the first time, he wasn't running alone. He had the sword and mace with him! His thoughts were making sense now, he could see images...he could feel a will to live, to go on. And his mind quickly formed one clear goal.. ...To find the bandits who had taken everything from him! The Revenge A full year had passed, with nobody being with Azara by his weapons. He had managed to forge straps, so that when he wanted to use his sword he'd hold the Mace on his side...and when he wanted to swing the Mace, he'd holster the sword on his back. He hunted with it. He focused all of his heart, energy and soul into finding the bandits who had taken so much from him. In dreams of the night, he held visions of the bandits slaying other men and women he'd never seen....an ethereal glimpse of his first memories of this world, when the Bandits had taken his true parents and home. He knew not what it meant, but it only strengthend his rage and his willpower. He asked around small hubs and villages for rumors of the Bandits, but it seemed he had always just missed them. When the rumors said they were in the north, he would arrive and be told that they had headed south. When he would go south, it was said it was a false lead and they had actually traveled west. Over this time of searching, Azara had grown strong with his weapons. His mace smashed and decimated the wildlife and the undead which roamed through the forest, and his sword had impaled other bandits which had tried to cut him down or take him again, for slavery. Azara had learned to fight back. He was born anew, and no longer would he be the victim who was always walked over. One day, after the full year was over...he found them. The bandits and their slaves of women that followed them in chains. Camped out in the mountains to the west, near where the future Kingdom Of Dreams would one day rise up from. Azara knew that although he was strong, he would be killed if he rushed at them alone. The slave pens that held the women were left with only two guards after the nightly rounds, and Azara decided his first course of action would be to find his mother...so in the dead of night, Azara snuck into the camp and slaughtered the guards with stealth and blade. The slaves were freed as Azara opened the pen, but he didn't see his mother...neither the one from his dreams, nor the one he had grown up with. And he came to know, as he saw the complexion of these slaves...they were recently enslaved. The raiders must have killed the old ones when they grew bored or tired of them. Rage filled his heart, as he shrieked with fury. The bandits were awakened and saw the slaves escaping, and quickly their swords were drawn as they aimed to begin slaughtering their fleeing women! But Azara...he was changed. He had endured so much his entire life, endured without purpose, faced torture and challenges from everyone who held power over him...and had become something more. The slaves escaped down the hill, not a single one of them harmed. As Azara, with only his sword and mace in hand....double handedly slaughtered the Bandits. It was something out of legend, which is why today it remains in legend. Dozens of bandits against one teenage boy, impaled, demolished, brutalized and killed. Slaughtered, like dogs. Azara stood there in the moonlight. Bathed in blood. Changed. He had done what he had set out to do, his mace lodged into the skull of the Bandit leader...and his sword dripping blood from the pommel to the tip. The Missing Villagers Serving as a mercenary, one who only took the contracts he wanted...Azara went on the rest of his teenage years, into his young adulthood. He was good, real good. Slaughtering anyone who he was asked to, he would only take the contracts that asked for Bandit leaders or people he deemed to be immoral. People like the bandits he had slaughtered years ago. His skill was unmatched, as he was able to acquire proper training and learn to fight without just the rage, but with technique bestowed on him from retired sell-swords and swordsman who had come to respect his talent. His work as a bandit hunter saved lives. Villages were spared, slaves were freed.Grateful peasants and villagers sought him out to offer gifts such as food and other payments. He always denied them, only taking the money he was offered for the initial contracts. He didn't ask for it but...people begun to follow him. They thought his work was something great, and they sensed a great destiny surrounding Azara. He asked them to leave, but made physical moves to end it...as he traveled around, destroying bandit camps and freeing slaves. He now carried a single sword on his hip, forgoing the mace long ago. His dedication to the blade only made him stronger, to the point that one day...there was a contract brought to him from a robed figure who didn't reveal their face. One unlike any contract he had ever been offered before. There was disappearances in the east. An unusual amount, far more than the usual rate. Something was making villagers go missing, and thus...Azara accepted to find the cause, and slay whatever Bandits were responsible. Only it wasn't Bandits. The village was already empty by the time Azara and the mass of people that followed him arrived. But..it wasn't burned down or anything, and there was no signs of a struggle. The small village was simply empty, with fishing nets in the water and fires still burning under cooking pots. It was as if they had all just...simply left. Azara and his followers stayed for hours in that village, waiting to see if the villagers would return or not...but midnight had come, and nobody with it. Azara turned to his followers, and ordered them to remain in the village as he drew his sword and wandered into the wilderness, hoping to find some sort of trail to follow. Through the forest he wandered, when he saw flickering orange in the distance....sudden memories flashed through his mind, the last time he had seen that flickering orange, that omen of fire...he rushed forward! Stopping at the treeline, he felt his heart freeze as he beheld the ungodly sight before him. Naked men danced around the fire, covered in entrails. They were chanting, chanting to a statue of a tentacle-like beast that sat proudly over the flames. They were... ...They were worshiping their heathen god, it seemed. Something otherworldly, something alien. Music...filled Azara's ears. Weaved itself through his thoughts and his mind, as his body ceased the flow of blood in his veins. His eyes stayed focused on that statue, of that old one. It's form clearly had tentacles, and wings like a dragon...but he could not decide what it looked like. Despite it's shape before him, it was as if this statue was unable to be fully perceived... The cultists, the worshipers. They fell to their knees, and sang in unison chants and incantations to appease this old one, this God. There was a priest there, a leader of the madness. He had the body of a man, but his eyes were yellow and beady, like some sort of fish creature. His arms were normal down to the elbow, where they warped from flesh into slimey pale tentacles, oozing goo and water. He had been watching the cultists do their deeds, when he suddenly turned his head...as those eyes befell Azara, looking directly into the soul. "Come, my child." He commanded with great authority, as Azara felt himself compelled to step forth...and approach this cultist leader. Azara was not here, nor there. None of this ritual was. In truth, it had not been in the forest on the outside of the village border...it had been in another place, Azara came to realize. As he perceived visions of old ones who slept below, and Gods who once reigned...until they entered deep slumber. Blackness surrounded him, old ones stared from the dark. At Azara who was no longer here, nor there. This was the Abyss, a place where none could find yet all may seek. A place of old truths and magical peak. And although it was dark he could quite see, the villagers who'd vanished...skinned alive for all to bier witness. Although their bodies were skinned and bound to totems, they did not cease their shrieking, they did not halt their wailing, eternal damnation was their fate in this place that was neither here, nor there. In the Abyss, Azara stood. In the Abyss, Azara witnessed. As a great old one, adorned with face tentacles and the wings of a dragon sat high upon his throne, madness contorting around him while Azara bore witness. Then it was over in an instant, as he stood there in the forest. Had he ever truly found the cult? Was it all some hallucination? Azara was a man who was not shaken easily, yet his heart was frozen and his mind was in pieces. Trembling, he knew not what to do. Turning around, Azara ventured back to the village as the sun rose, only to hear screams of agony and fear. As he entered the town, there he saw the sight. The bodies of the villagers sat high upon a pile ten feet tall, skinned alive and rotting. It had appeared suddenly in the center of town, just before Azara had returned. His followers clung to him, staying near his aura and presence as they felt safe near this man, and away from evil witchcraft. But Azara was troubled, for he knew what he had seen. whether or not it was real or a mass hallucination, he'd be haunted by his visions of old ones...for perhaps the rest of his life. Eternal Blood The capital of the Kingdom of the era, Windshesiere---is where Azara found himself. A courier had been sent with a message for Azara, the famed bandit slayer and mercenary. King Ulys II wanted to speak with the warrior directly, demanding his immediate presence. Azara kneeled before the lord of the land, as King Ulys II made it quite clear what he desired. His daughter had run off with a bandit leader that came in the night and whisked her away with tales of romance and marriage, and all the Knights and mercenaries sent after them had not returned. Azara was to find the princess of Windshesiere and bring her back, while slaying the filthy mongrel that dared touch the princess along the way. To Lornha he followed his trail from track and rumor